RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesJustin Marks Says Max Verstappen's NASCAR Path Runs Straight Into a Ford Badge
Trackhouse Racing has made a habit of putting outsiders behind the wheel of a stock car just to see what happens. Kimi Raikkonen tried it. So did Helio Castroneves and, most recently, Kevin Magnussen. Shane van Gisbergen tried it once and never left, turning a one-off Chicago street race in 2023 into a full-time NASCAR career that's since made him one of the sport's biggest personalities. So it wasn't exactly shocking when Kevin Harvick asked Trackhouse founder Justin Marks, on a recent taping of SPEED with Harvick and Buxton, whether Max Verstappen might be next.
What was mildly shocking is that Marks didn't just laugh and change the subject. Verstappen watched Van Gisbergen's stunning Chicago debut live and admitted afterward he could barely contain himself, and he has downplayed the idea of a NASCAR start in the past. But Marks, whose team is sponsored by Red Bull and fields two Red Bull-backed drivers in Van Gisbergen and Connor Zilisch, said the door isn't closed. It's just currently blocked by a piece of engineering nobody outside the paddock thinks about: an engine badge.
"I certainly wouldn't count it out for the future," Marks said, but the more interesting part of his answer was everything that came before it.
Here's the wrinkle almost nobody explaining this story has bothered to unpack: Trackhouse races Chevrolets in the NASCAR Cup Series. Verstappen drives for Red Bull Racing in Formula 1, and since the start of the 2026 F1 season, Red Bull's power units haven't come from Honda. They come from Red Bull Ford Powertrains, a factory partnership built with Ford over three years that marked the company's return to grand prix racing after a 22-year absence. That makes Verstappen, functionally, a Ford-badged driver in his day job. Climbing into a Chevrolet for even a single NASCAR start would put a driver under contract to one manufacturer's marketing machine inside a car wearing a rival's bowtie logo, and manufacturer exclusivity clauses in racing sponsorship deals aren't the kind of thing teams paper over for a publicity stunt. That's what Marks meant when he said Verstappen's F1 car needs a different power unit before anything with Trackhouse can happen. He wasn't talking about horsepower. He was talking about who signs the checks.
It's a very different problem than the one NASCAR usually solves with international guest drivers. Getting a road-course specialist or a rookie into a Next Gen car mostly comes down to a NASCAR-issued competition license, an oval or road-course-only designation depending on experience, a physical, and insurance riders the team arranges before the driver ever sits in the seat. Those are solvable problems on a two-week timeline. A manufacturer conflict baked into a driver's primary sponsorship deal is not, and it's the reason Project 91 has been able to borrow F1, IndyCar and Supercars stars in the past without anyone blinking. None of them arrived with a rival manufacturer's name stitched into their contract the way Verstappen effectively does now.
There's also a technical gap that makes the idea more of a novelty than a genuine crossover test. NASCAR's Next Gen car runs a naturally aspirated pushrod V8 producing roughly 670 horsepower on mile-and-a-half ovals, built around a spec chassis every team shares. Verstappen's day job is a 1.6-liter turbo-hybrid V6 that produces close to triple that output once the electric motors are factored in, in a car that steers, brakes and corners nothing like a 3,400-pound stock car. Van Gisbergen's Chicago win looked seamless partly because he'd already spent years racing V8 Supercars, a discipline far closer to NASCAR's driving style than anything in Verstappen's resume. A Verstappen NASCAR start wouldn't just be a scheduling favor between Red Bull-aligned teams. It would be one of the harder adaptations Project 91 has attempted, regardless of how much raw talent shows up in the car.
None of that means Marks was blowing smoke. Project 91 has always been part marketing exercise and part legitimate motorsports curiosity, and Trackhouse has more incentive than most teams to keep the idea alive in the press . Kevin Magnussen's lone confirmed start this season, at San Diego, already generated headlines of its own once he tangled with Noah Gragson afterward, proof that a single Project 91 appearance can dominate a news cycle regardless of where the car finishes. A Verstappen fantasy costs Trackhouse nothing and keeps Red Bull's name in a NASCAR conversation it wouldn't otherwise be part of.
For fans hoping to see it happen at Chicago, a future road-course date, or wherever NASCAR's schedule expands next , the realistic timeline is longer than one offseason. It likely requires Red Bull's F1 engine program changing suppliers again, Verstappen stepping back from a full-time F1 seat, or Trackhouse switching manufacturers, and none of those are on the table right now. But considering NASCAR has already turned a Finnish F1 champion, an Indy 500 legend and a Haas refugee into ratings winners, nobody in Charlotte is in a rush to say never.
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